This invention relates to tracking of vehicles and more particularly to a method for increasing the accuracy in determining the location of a vehicle.
Existing technology makes it possible to determine the approximate current location of a vehicle. Such information has proven useful in tracking vehicles which can be stationary or in motion. Any company or entity with a fleet of vehicles typically can monitor movement or location of one or more of its vehicles. GPS systems are utilized in determining vehicle location. GPS systems make use of orbiting satellites to provide the location information of vehicles such as trucks to an operations center of a trucking company for example.
The accuracy in determining the vehicle location depends on many factors including the number of satellites visible in the system for example. The factors may also include landscape features such as buildings, urban density, mountains or forested terrain for example. Other factors may include the selective availability (SA) feature of satellites which is an artificial falsification of the time in the transmitted satellite signal that is used by the United States military to (deliberately) introduce errors for non-military applications.
It has been observed that, for stationary vehicles for example, the location as determined by existing methods varies by as much as 200 to 500 meters from the actual vehicle location. It is, therefore, desirable to increase the reliability (and as a result, the accuracy) in locating a vehicle.
In exemplary embodiments, a method is provided for determining a vehicle location with a higher degree of accuracy.